Ruşen Çakır is often presented as a sharp ‘analyst’ of political Islam and Kurdish politics, as well as a ‘fearless’ journalist, but the real story of his career begins not with courage but with capitulation. His career is the story of a man who has consistently adapted himself to power — sometimes by betraying friends, sometimes by lending his face to the absurd, and today by running a platform that critics say has become a megaphone for Turkey’s intelligence service (MIT).
Ruşen Çakır was born on January 25, 1962, in Hopa to Nermin and Ali Hikmet Çakır. When he was four years old, his family moved to Istanbul, where he would later attend Galatasaray High School. Çakır has often described himself as someone who was “born into politics,” noting that his family’s political leanings shaped him from an early age. In his writings, he often referred to his family background as staunchly CHP (Republican People’s Party). His father, Ali Hikmet, had sympathized with the Democrat Party (DP) during CHP rule, but when the DP came to power, he distanced himself from it and went on to become the CHP district chairman in Hopa. According to Ruşen, his father frequently complained about the pressures he faced as an opposition figure in such a small town. In his own words: “He wasn’t a leftist, but he didn’t like right-wingers either.”
It was against this backdrop that the young Çakır gravitated toward leftist activism. At just 14, while boarding at Galatasaray High School, he came into contact with DEV-SOL’s youth network, then one of the most active left-wing political movements in Turkey. Decades later, he would remember that formative period in these words:
“Of course, being a CHP supporter wasn’t enough, and the slogan ‘Left of Center’ didn’t provide much excitement. So at the age of 14, while boarding at Galatasaray High School, a group of us became ‘revolutionaries.’ We were politicized to an extent far beyond our age, and we paid a heavy price—we were tortured, we lost friends, we were imprisoned. But we never really grew tired of politics—or at least I never did.”
On January 18, 2010, in a statement published in Turkish media, Çakır openly acknowledged his membership in Dev-Genç, stressing that his involvement had been neither casual nor innocent:“We were among those who started early. It wasn’t innocent at all—it was an organized activity. Our lives were marked by an intense struggle.”
In February 1981, as a young member of Liseli Dev-Genç, Çakır was arrested and interrogated. Instead of resisting, he broke quickly. In his very first statement to police on April 6, 1981, he admitted his code name within Dev-Sol was “Kemal” and went further: he gave the names of friends and comrades who had recruited, directed, and worked alongside him.
And in the continuation of his statement, Ruşen Çakır said word for word that, as a leftist revolutionary, he was a member of the Dev-Sol organization, and that since 1976 he had been engaged in cultural activities within the group.
According to his testimony during detention, Ruşen Çakır explained that his political involvement began in 1976, when two individuals, Ali Taşözü and Tamer Tabak, introduced him to the Istanbul High School Students’ Association (İDOD). After a split within the group, he continued his activism with the revolutionary youth movement. In 1977, he formally joined Liseli Dev-Genç, where Kaan Akalanbar appointed him as the person responsible for Galatasaray High School. His activities later extended to Istanbul Technical University and the Young Engineers’ Association, where he worked in the Taksim area under the supervision of Selçuk Ilgaz. By 1979, he was operating under the code name “Kemal.”
Çakır further stated that in March 1980 he became the person responsible for Education and Cultural Affairs within Liseli Dev-Genç. Following the September 12, 1980 military coup, he said he was ordered to dissolve his organizational activities, after which he shifted to Kadıköy, where his new task was to mobilize mass support. He later assumed responsibility for the Göztepe district. Throughout his testimony, Çakır emphasized that all of his activities had been theoretical in nature, and he denied having taken part in any direct or practical actions.
After this statement, he was referred to the prosecutor’s office. Having “sung like a nightingale” at the police station, Ruşen Çakır appeared before Public Prosecutor Sırrı Çekiç on April 22, 1981. His April 6, 1981, police statement was then read aloud and presented to him. While giving his testimony to the prosecutor, he noted that he had given his earlier police statement while blindfolded and then added the following:
“As has been alleged, I am not a member of any illegal organization, nor did I take on any responsibilities within the High School Dev-Genç organization. I did not publish the High School Dev-Genç bulletin, nor did I take on the duties of the organization’s education committee. I only know my girlfriend, Bedia Oğur. I do not know Yalçın Arıkan, codenamed Haluk. I know Erkan because we were both students at Galatasaray High School. I do not know Murat Toros Gürkaya, Zekiye Yıldırım code-named Zerrin, or Alişan Yalçın. I also do not know Sibel Özer, codenamed Zeynep,” he said.
After this testimony, Çakır’s prison days began at Hasdal Military Prison at the end of April 1981 and ended in August 1982 at Metris Military Prison. Unlike many of his contemporaries who endured long prison terms, Çakır served a relatively short sentence — while others languished for much longer. In political circles, this leniency raised whispered questions: had his cooperation spared him?
Nearly two decades later, during a 2001 nationwide operation that crippled the DHKP/C, Çakır’s name surfaced again. Both in seized organizational documents and in the testimony of member İnan Doğan, one note stood out:
“Ruşen…: Ruşen ÇAKIR: Former LDG (High School Dev-Genç) member, contact with him will be reestablished.”
Time had passed, but the organization had not forgotten him. Adding to the intrigue, observers noted that his first wife, journalist, advertising writer, and screenwriter Jülide Gaye Boralıoğlu, had herself been arrested in a 1985 operation against Dev-Sol.
After his release, he established a name for himself in journalism, beginning at Nokta in 1985. He wrote for publications such as Tempo, Cumhuriyet, and Milliyet, and worked at major broadcasters like CNN Türk and NTV. In 2015, he founded Medyascope.
The Willing Face of Provocation
If prison revealed his pliability under pressure, journalism soon revealed his malleability in performance. In 1985, at Nokta magazine, Çakır found himself at the center of another controversy: the infamous cover portraying Istanbul University as a toilet, with YÖK president İhsan Doğramacı defecating on it.
As recalled by his colleagues, the cover required a model to pose — trousers down, face hidden, body substituted for the satirical image. Ruşen Çakır resisted at first. But once convinced that his face would not be visible, he agreed. A young reporter, eager to please, he literally lent his backside to the story. For some, the anecdote is comical; for others, it foreshadows a career defined by accommodation, a willingness to serve others’ agendas so long as personal exposure could be managed.
When Ruşen Çakır launched Medyascope in 2015, the project was hailed as a bold experiment in Turkey’s collapsing media ecosystem. With mainstream outlets under government control and independent voices silenced, Çakır appeared to offer something precious: pluralism, intellectual space, and critical dialogue.
But as Turkey drifted further into authoritarianism under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Medyascope changed. Its early promise of independence faded into a more insidious role: the civilian arm of intelligence operations, a platform that amplifies narratives convenient to the state while masquerading as neutral journalism
From Dev-Genç to Chrest: The Irony of Reversal
The credibility crisis around Medyascope deepened with revelations that it received nearly half a million dollars from the U.S.-based Chrest Foundation. On its own, international support for independent media is not unusual; countless outlets around the world rely on donor support to maintain operations. Yet the optics in Ruşen Çakır’s case are particularly fraught, given his own political trajectory.
As discussed above, Çakır was a member of Dev-Genç (Revolutionary Youth), one of Turkey’s most radical leftist student movements. Dev-Genç defined itself as uncompromisingly anti-imperialist, fiercely hostile to U.S. influence in Turkey, and committed to dismantling capitalism as a global system. Its members lionized anti-colonial movements from Vietnam to Palestine and saw NATO and the CIA as central enemies of Turkish independence. Their rhetoric was not about reform but about revolution: the United States was the imperial core, capitalism its vehicle, and Turkey’s ruling elite its comprador servant.
Çakır’s personal arc — from a Dev-Genç militant who risked prison in the name of resisting U.S. hegemony, to a media entrepreneur now dependent on an American foundation with a shadowy history — is nothing less than a political inversion. To Dev-Genç’s worldview, accepting U.S. funding for journalism would not simply be compromise; it would be betrayal.
The Chrest Foundation’s record adds fuel to this irony. WikiLeaks documents revealed that Chrest at one point sought detailed information about Turkish military units in the southeast — a region at the heart of the Kurdish conflict and Turkey’s most sensitive national-security theater. Even if Chrest is legally a private philanthropy, such activities blur the line between benign support and intelligence-linked information gathering. For critics, the fact that Çakır’s platform remained operational and financially stable while other outlets withered was less a story of resilience than of alignment: survival made possible by resources tied to U.S. strategic interests.
Ruşen Çakır defended himself on social media with these words:
“Those who are different stay apart, those who are the same stay together…”
By quoting this line of Mahir Çayan, Çakır was clearly hinting: “Yes, we received the money from the U.S. for Medyascope,” while at the same time calling for “revolutionary solidarity.” But imagine telling Çayan, who once took up arms against imperialism: “One day, this very sentence will be used by a journalist in your homeland to defend receiving American foundation funds.” What would his reaction have been?
In his 2001 testimony, the controversial figure Tuncay Güney—later infamous as a key informant in the Ergenekon investigations—alleged that journalist Ruşen Çakır had submitted reports on Turkey’s religious communities to Graham Fuller, the CIA’s Middle East Chief. These claims, though contested, became the subject of numerous opinion columns and fueled speculation about Çakır’s ties to intelligence circles. Notably, it was the same Graham Fuller who, only a few years later, wrote a reference letter supporting Fethullah Gülen’s application for permanent U.S. residency.
Shortly thereafter, Çakır received a scholarship from the RAND Corporation, where Fuller was a senior official, and moved to the United States. He later returned to Turkey and took up a post at Milliyet newspaper.
On January 14, 2008, Çakır again attracted controversy when it was alleged that he had prepared a confidential report for General İlker Başbuğ outlining strategies to neutralize both the AK Party and Turkey’s religious communities.
As for Mr. Ruşen, like his followers, he doesn’t trouble himself with such matters. He doesn’t dwell on the past. He is open to every kind of offer—so long as responsibility is collective, and no single person is held accountable. So much so that he even once posed nude for that legendary Nokta cover marking YÖK’s fourth anniversary.
The implications are stark. Çakır, once a symbol of Turkey’s radical anti-American left, now finds himself accused of serving as a channel for narratives that dovetail with the CIA’s long history of media manipulation — from Operation Mockingbird to contemporary “democracy promotion” programs. The credibility gap is not only about his editorial line on the Gülenists or Öcalan; it is about the contradiction between his youthful defiance of imperialism and his present-day dependence on institutions tied, however indirectly, to the very power Dev-Genç defined as the enemy.
Medyascope and the “Dissolution” Agenda
Perhaps the clearest indicator of Medyascope’s role in intelligence-driven narrative management is its fixation on the Gülen movement’s so-called “self-dissolution.” Ruşen Çakır is virtually the only non-Gülenist journalist who produces a steady stream of content — both on Medyascope’s website and its YouTube channel — devoted to the idea that the movement should voluntarily disband.
Since mid-April, when we first revealed that Erdoğan was quietly floating a dual strategy—reconciliation with the Kurds on one side and exploratory feelers toward the Gülen movement on the other—a coordinated media campaign has taken shape.
The first volley came from familiar figures. Former Gülenist academic Gökhan Bacık proposed last May via Medyascope that the movement “dissolve itself,” a phrase that perfectly mirrored the staged demobilization rhetoric now being applied to the PKK. Soon after, Mümtaz’er Türköne — another former insider who has since repositioned himself as a regime-friendly critic — endorsed the idea again o the same platform. What emerged was not an organic intellectual debate but a choreographed narrative: equating the Gülen movement with the PKK, and presenting “dissolution” as the only path back into society.
In this regard, the Medyascope platform has become the central amplifier of this line. By doing this, Medyascope has transitioned from journalism to psychological warfare, serving more as the media branch of Turkish intelligence than as an independent outlet.
In recent years — especially since the launch of the second Kurdish peace process last October, marked by Devlet Bahçeli’s handshake with DEM Party MPs — Medyascope’s editorial line has come to mirror, almost uncannily, the communications strategy of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT). Two themes stand out. First, the channel has consistently amplified the idea of an Öcalan–state understanding, echoing MİT’s effort to instrumentalize the imprisoned PKK leader as a tool of political engineering. Second, it has provided a platform for former Gülenists such as Gökhan Bacık and Mümtaz’er Türköne, who now argue that the Gülen movement should dissolve itself — a narrative that dovetails neatly with Ankara’s agenda, framing the community as a terrorist structure destined. This dual mission reflects a broader pattern of state–intelligence media capture, not unique to Turkey but resonant with global practices. Intelligence services from the Soviet KGB to the apartheid-era Bureau of State Security and from the CIA’s Cold War media fronts to Poland’s SB (Security Service), have long used ostensibly independent outlets to fragment, demoralize, or re-integrate oppositional groups under controlled narratives .for self-erasure.
Soft Words, Hard Ends
Unlike pro-government outlets, Medyascope does not brand Gülenists as traitors or terrorists. Instead, it adopts softer terms such as cemaat (“community”) or the Gülenists. This choice of language creates a tone of familiarity and trust for some of the Gülenists, but it is also tactical. Open hostility repels; soft language disarms.
A central audience for this strategy is the KHK’lılar — the hundreds of thousands dismissed from state service by emergency decrees after 2016. Many of them remain politically homeless, stigmatized, and desperate for reintegration. Medyascope frames dissolution as their pathway back to Turkey. The promise of return and partial forgiveness appears humanitarian, but in practice it dovetails with the state’s interest in fragmenting and defanging the movement.
This is the core of Medyascope’s role: what looks like empathy is in fact narrative management. Where loyalist media isolates and condemns Gülenists, Çakır’s outlet shepherds them more gently toward the same destination — dissolution, depoliticization, and eventual absorption into the state’s terms.
The timing is significant. Since Fethullah Gülen’s death, the movement has been led by a council of senior associates he appointed before his passing. Their authority is fragile but symbolically important for continuity. Çakır’s editorial line works to delegitimize this leadership completely. He is blunt: “Gülenism cannot be revived in Turkey. The movement is finished. Öcalan and the PKK won, but Gülenists lost.”
The contrast is deliberate. Kurdish nationalism, through armed struggle, retains bargaining power; Gülenism, Çakır insists, has none. Its cadres are depicted as a defeated, scattered remnant. The only future, he implies, lies in individual surrender — not collective resistance — and cautious reintegration under state mercy.
For some Gülenists inside Turkey, particularly the KHK’lılar, this message resonates. Çakır urges the government to forgive and reinstate them, at least in part. To families ruined by dismissal, this sounds like a lifeline. Yet the catch is clear: reintegration comes at the cost of values, memory, and dignity.
The Historical Pattern of “Controlled Reintegration”
What Ruşen Çakır does with Medyascope — inviting dismissed public servants, ex-Gülenists, academics in particular, and regime-aligned critics to speak and write under his framework — is not unique. Around the world, intelligence services and regimes have perfected the tactic of “controlled reintegration.” The strategy is simple: offer partial forgiveness, symbolic inclusion, or selective rehabilitation not to heal society, but to dissolve opposition movements, fragment solidarity, and create dependency on the state’s terms.
Communist Dissidents in Eastern Europe
Under communist regimes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, some dissidents were offered “conditional rehabilitation.” A writer or academic might be allowed back into a university post or permitted to publish again — but only if they renounced activism or criticized their former comrades. This method not only removed influential figures from the resistance but also gave the state a propaganda victory: “Look, we are not oppressive; we allow space for those who reform.” The system remained intact, while the opposition was weakened.
Post-Apartheid South Africa and the TRC
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa is often celebrated as a model of healing. Yet many scholars note that it functioned as a form of containment. Perpetrators of apartheid crimes could confess and receive forgiveness, but the deeper economic and social structures of racial inequality were left untouched. The TRC absorbed opposition energies into a managed process that satisfied elites while disarming radical demands. Çakır’s model parallels this: by hosting discussions that present “reconciliation” as possible only through state-managed frames, he deflects attention from the structural injustices Gülenists face — mass dismissals, property confiscations, travel bans — and reframes survival itself as generosity.
Soviet “Controlled Opposition”
In Stalin’s USSR, some dissidents and intellectuals were neither executed nor exiled but permitted to work under strict censorship. These individuals served a double purpose: they demonstrated the state’s supposed tolerance while isolating them from genuine exiled opposition groups. The message was clear: your survival depends on obedience and silence. Today, Çakır’s treatment of Gülenists follows the same psychological playbook: “You may exist, but only under my editorial framework, where you implicitly accept the impossibility of your movement’s independent revival.”
Conclusion: Why “MİTyascope” Fits
The label “MİTyascope” is not a joke — it is an accurate description. Ruşen Çakır is not neutral, not independent, and certainly not fearless. From his Dev-Genç betrayal to his foreign funding, from his tokenized role at Nokta to his current role in engineering narratives about Kurdish politics and the Gülen movement, Çakır has always been owned by others.
In other words, Çakır’s story is not one of fearless journalism but of long-term co-optation. Since his arrest in the early 1980s, when he confessed under interrogation and gave the names of his comrades, he has carried the mark of a man the intelligence services could use
Medyascope’s carefully curated output shows that intelligence services no longer need to control media through censorship and bans. They can now do it through money, access, and pliable figures like Çakır. And that is why his channel should be understood not as a bold experiment in independent journalism, but as a textbook case of how intelligence manufactures consent under the guise of media freedom.
By granting selective sympathy, delegitimizing leadership, and amplifying voices that encourage dissolution, Çakır has turned his platform into a weapon of controlled reintegration. The Gülen movement, already wounded, is now subjected to a softer but equally insidious campaign: not eradication by force, but absorption through manipulation.
History shows where this leads. From Eastern Europe to South Africa, from the Soviet Union to Turkey’s own Kurdish conflict, such strategies never bring true reconciliation. They bring managed silence. And that is exactly what Medyascope seems designed to deliver.
If the Gülen movement dissolves, it would hand Erdoğan the same kind of propaganda victory that Poland’s communist regime achieved in the 1980s. In Poland, the state pointed to the collapse or co-optation of dissident groups as proof that resistance had been illegitimate all along. Erdoğan would do the same: “Look, the Gülenists have dissolved themselves — just as we always said, they were the ones behind the coup. It was never staged.”
The act of disappearance itself would be weaponized as evidence. Just as in Poland, where dissolution confirmed the state’s strength and discredited its opponents, in Turkey it would allow the regime to close the book on 2016 on its own terms — not as a contested story, but as a final verdict that the Gülen movement was guilty and the system was vindicated.
By: News About Turkey (NAT)
